The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The Simple World That Got Away Up TO ABOUT the middle of World War II, I had a feeling that the average intelligent citizen could keep pretty well in touch with...
...The great bomb was dropped on Hiroshima...
...I have seen a good many boats of different sorts, but this undersea craft is something entirely new—and I have come away from it with a changed picture of what our future world will be like...
...One of these was a fine, strapping colored boy...
...When I hoisted myself out of the rather narrow hole through which one gets in and out of this strange undersea world, I felt as if I had crossed a dividing line...
...That seemed more mysterious, but, after all, it just turned power into another form and sent it out over wires to do its work...
...I happened to have a nephew who belonged to the inner circle of those who shared the great secret...
...another sailor gave me a higher figure...
...The world before the atom bomb and the ballistic missile I could understand—or at least I thought I could...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The Simple World That Got Away Up TO ABOUT the middle of World War II, I had a feeling that the average intelligent citizen could keep pretty well in touch with what was going on in the world...
...Don't expect me accurately to describe and explain what I saw...
...But just once, late at night, after we had been having an especially confidential talk...
...But it will never again be the nice, rather old-fashioned place powered by steam and electricity...
...I put to him the question which was on everyone's mind: "What is this great secret which you cannot reveal or discuss...
...Delaware, the headquarters of the DuPonts, may have experienced that disquieting notion some months earlier than citizens of more ordinary towns...
...Modern life had begun with the production and application of steam power, the mechanism of which was simple enough for anyone to understand: A piston was shoved back and forth in a cylinder by a head of steam...
...At any rate, the colored sailors are there and nobody thinks anything of it...
...Both here and in Russia it was rapidly developed for destruction...
...With my wife and a couple of our friends I drove down to Newport News to witness the commissioning of our third ballistic missile submarine, the Robert E. Lee...
...Like all of the others of his cult, he was absolutely silent about what was going on...
...Perhaps that world will be better, deserts will be watered, there will be enough for all...
...Time passed...
...but if I were to tell you, you would be scared to death and probably would not believe me...
...The oxygen content of the air is maintained by generators which derive oxygen from the seawater...
...As we peered at the strange things visible in this strange, new world, there were members of the crew ready to do their best by way of explanation...
...We who lived in Wilmington...
...I had been told that the nuclear-powered world will be different, but here on this submarine I had had it demonstrated to me...
...I shall never even try...
...He told me that there are five or six Negroes in the crew...
...I should probably make all sorts of mistakes, and the one thing I wish to avoid is making a fool of myself...
...And then came electricity...
...The nuclear propulsion system contains an enriched uranium core in a water-cooled reactor plant which makes the ship independent of the atmosphere and capable of indefinite periods of submerged operation...
...Last Friday I was jarred out of my usual calm state by being brought closer to this magic power development than I ever expected to be...
...And then, about the middle of the war, I developed a feeling that all of that comfortable, understandable old world was slipping away from us...
...This ship carries a force capable of more destruction than all of the bombs dropped on both sides during World War II...
...When they are fired they go straight up through the water and then start on their course toward the point of attack, thousands of miles away...
...Our fears and premonitions were caused by the fact that several floors of the great, central DuPont Building were out of bounds for ordinary folks...
...We were told that the atom had been split and that endless power was available for good or ill...
...Being well trained in this sort of thing, we refrained from asking questions of the serious-faced young men who went in and out of the forbidden area...
...Anything which the officers and men may require can be carried along or produced as they go...
...The great tubes which carry the bombs are lined up along the bottom of the vessel—noses up...
...But development for peaceful purposes has remained almost at a standstill...
...this thing that we are working on is so awful that a man cannot conceive of the horror of it and at the same time it may turn out to be so wonderful that it will make the whole world a far happier place...
...Down there below the water where human relations are so close month after month, healthy and normal young men of the two races take life together as a perfectly normal thing...
...But what I saw in that submarine I shall never understand...
...His face took on an ultra-solemn look and he said: "Uncle Bill, I can't tell you...
Vol. 43 • October 1960 • No. 40
